


'Cause a Drawing Ain't a Photo

by Jayswing



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Daryl's an artist, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Rick's an artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 14:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1473190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jayswing/pseuds/Jayswing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl thinks that, to most people, fucking someone's a little more intimate than painting them. Then again, he's never really cared what most people think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Cause a Drawing Ain't a Photo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturnvalors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnvalors/gifts).



> Written at the request of the lovely Dani (normansreeds.tumblr.com). She only asked for a high school AU in which Rick is a year younger than Daryl and has a massive crush on him, and Daryl's a badass player who has commitment issues. I took that and made it into the whole painting thing. I think it's just because I watched Norman painting stuff, but I digress. I hope you all, and especially Dani, enjoy it.

Rick’s never understood why his parents couldn’t move in the summer, so he wouldn’t have to do _this._

It’s the middle of the school year, but it’s only his first day at this new school. He’s made it through four of his classes, and, so far, two teachers’d made him get up in front of the class and introduce himself, and he’s still blushing from how many times he’d stuttered and his voice cracked. But he’d made a friend, at least, a nice kid named Glenn the teacher had him sit next to in his first period class, English. He was the one teacher beside the gym coach who didn’t seem to want to make a game out of humiliating him in front of twenty some-odd kids. But, lunch was what he’d been dreading most, because that’s the one time of the day that’s centered on social interaction. But, he has someone to sit next to, thank God. He focuses on the simple relief of having Glenn walking next to him instead of the eyes of various kids trained on him.

“So, where’re you from?” Glenn asks when they get their lunches and sit down at the table.

He smiles at the question, because it’s the first time today he doesn’t have to answer it in front of a class of people who don’t even really care. “Just a few towns over. My parents’ work isn’t all that consistent, so we move around a lot. I’m just hopin’ that we won’t have to move again before I graduate.”

“I know that feel. I moved here from Michigan at the beginning of sophomore year, and I don’t know if I’d be able to do it again.”

“Yeah. . . It gets tougher the older you get. Everyone knows the friends they’ve had since they were little, and you’re jus’ the odd one out startin’ fresh, you know?” Rick sighs. How shy he is already makes it hard for him to meet people and actually talk with them. He hadn’t been expecting to have a conversation like this for at least a couple of weeks.

He and Glenn fall into amicable silence for a few minutes, munching on the crappy pizza their school had to offer for lunch. Rick makes a mental note to start bringing in a cold lunch; this stuff honestly is god awful. He takes a sip from his soda, and he finds that it’s a hell of a lot better than the main course. Then again, it’s kind of hard to screw up soda, but he digresses. Rick settles to leave his pizza half-eaten and alternates between drinking the soda and watching the people in the room around them, responding to Glenn’s idle chattering at the right moments to keep his friend from thinking he wasn’t listening. He’s good at that kind of thing.

But then _he_ walks into the room, and Rick finds his ability to multitask snuffed out before he even acknowledges it, or really cares, even.

Clad in a worn leather jacket, a boy’s just walked into the cafeteria, tucking a pack of cigarettes into his back pocket of his jeans none too discreetly. He’s got windswept, stick-straight, dirty blonde hair halfway down his neck, and, even with how messy it looks, Rick thinks it’d be the softest thing he’d ever touched. He next notices how nicely it frames his face, and his eyes are drawn to full, pink lips, curled into a defiant little smirk at the teachers who were disapprovingly watching him put his cigarettes away. He’s even got a little birthmark above the corner of his mouth, and it only seems to add to his impish demeanor, somehow.

But what really has him going are those _eyes._ Even under the shadow of his challengingly furrowed brow, they’re bluer than the damn sky, twice as vibrant as the waters he’d seen on that one family trip to Florida he’d taken with his mother and father. Rick watches in fascination as they sweep over the room, the caution in them defying the otherwise carefree aura he emits.

He’s transfixed on the sight of this—beautiful, he thinks reverently—boy until those ridiculously blue eyes rest on _him._

Rick jumps as if electrocuted, and his eyes drop to his hands, a blush burning at his cheeks. Even at sixteen, he’s never had a legitimate girlfriend, and he’s starting to think he knows why. Thinking that the school cafeteria really _isn’t_ a place for him to be having this revelation, he starts playing with his pizza, picking at the annoyingly hard crust of it. He’s about to put a piece of it in his mouth before he remembers how awful it is, and he shakes his head to clear it.

“Hey, man, are you even listening to me?” Glenn asks, tearing him out of his thoughts.

“Oh, damn. I’m sorry, Glenn,” Rick gushes, already flustered, eyes flickering back to try to find the boy. He finds him seated alone at one of the tables at the back, playing with a lighter. He has his tongue sticking out as he stares at the little flame, and Rick has to swallow down the sudden dryness in his throat at the sight. “What’d you say?”

“Uh, it’s not important. What has you so distracted, huh?”

Rick looks at him then, so desperate to find out more information about the boy that he has no qualms making his fascination obvious. “Who is that?” he asks, pointing over to the boy. He does it quickly; even if he’s incredibly intrigued, he doesn’t think he wants to be caught gawking at him.

“Who?” Glenn asks, and Rick nervously gestures to the boy again, this time for longer. “Oh, him? That’s Daryl Dixon.”

He can’t help but notice how Glenn’s eyes became stormy at the mention of Daryl’s name. “Do you not like him or somethin’?” Rick asks nervously.

“No, I’m pretty cool with him. He hasn’t done anything to me, after all,” Glenn says dismissively. “Why?”

Rick shrugs. “Jus’ wonderin’ why he’s sittin’ on his own like that.” _Or if he’s single_.

“Daryl’s more of a loner, y’know. Real badass. His brother’s a legend around here.”

“What for?”

“Basically everything,” Glenn says, laughing. “There’s not much that Merle Dixon didn’t do when he went to school here.”

“How about Daryl? Is he like that?” Rick asks, and he doesn’t know why he finds himself hoping that he isn’t.

“Nah, he mostly keeps to himself unless someone starts something with him. I’ve never heard about him getting in a lot of trouble, but he _is_ a senior. He might get into stuff I don’t know about.”

Rick tries to keep himself from seeming too hopeful, but Glenn seems to see through it. He has that worry on his face, the kind of look his father gets when he sees some dangerous new hobby he’s considering. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up, man. Daryl’s got some problems. There isn’t a person in this school—guy or girl—Daryl hasn’t had a fling with. But he never sticks around for it to get serious. Ask anyone.”

He flushes at what his friend is insinuating. “Why’s that?” Rick asks.

Glenn shrugs. “I don’t know, man. But a word of advice? Don’t try to get close to Daryl Dixon.”

* * *

 

When Daryl walks into art class five minutes late, he’s infuriated that his thoughts aren’t entirely his own.

No, they’re on that kid he caught staring at him in the middle of the cafeteria. He’d pretended not to notice, because he had no interest in making an obviously already-awkward kid feel even more self-conscious, but there’s not much that Daryl misses. And he doubts he could’ve ever missed _him,_ even if he hadn’t been caught staring at Daryl.

The first thing he’d noticed were those _lips_. They were pink, almost red, and Daryl can only fantasize about how dark he could make them, kissing and biting at them until they were swollen. He thinks about how it’d feel to wind his hair in those dark brown curls while he pressed him up against a wall and ground his body and lips into him. Daryl licks his lips at the thought.

“Kind of you to join us, Mr. Dixon,” his art teacher says sternly when he takes his seat, and Daryl just smiles up at her innocently.

“Wouldn’t be much of an art class without me, would it, Miss K?” he asks cheekily, blowing his hair out of his eyes. He sees the woman hide a smile before she returns to her computer, and Daryl knows that she isn’t marking him as tardy.

Miss K’s probably the only teacher who doesn’t hate him in this damn school. Maybe it’s because he’s always been the best artist in the class since he’d first had her in freshman year. Smirking, he finds himself praising his decision to take an art class back entering high school despite Merle’s taunts, because, ever since then, it’s been the only class he’s actually enjoyed in high school. He’s always loved painting, but he and Merle’d always been lucky if they had food to eat, much less paints and brushes and canvases. And, now, he has a place to keep them without them getting smashed in one of his father’s drunken rages, and Miss K’s never thrown away any of his projects. He thinks that maybe he’ll ask her for all of them when he has a place of his own to store them in, maybe even show them off, regardless of if it’s only to himself. For now, he just likes that they aren’t ruined.

Daryl usually sits by himself in the back of the room, and it’s not hard to notice that the seat to his right is occupied. It immediately irks him, because having people nearby always throws him off his game. Maybe expecting criticism and sardonic remarks has something to do with the major buzz kill, but he likes to think it’s just because people in general piss him off.

“Hey, Miss K,” Daryl says loudly, not caring that twenty pairs of eyes are drawn to him. Including the ones directly to his right. They feel different, for some reason, but Daryl shrugs it off.

“What is it, Daryl?”

“Wanna tell me why this kid—” He gestures to the person next to him with his thumb, not looking at him, “—is sittin’ next to me?”

“Because he’s new here, and there isn’t anywhere else for him to sit,” Miss K responded firmly, eyeing him over her spectacles. “Be nice, Daryl. If he really does bother you, we can work something out. But that won’t be necessary, will it, Rick?”

“No, ma’am,” the boy, Rick, responds, his voice sounding like it came out from under the muffling leaves all over Daryl’s woods.

Daryl huffs and goes to look at the boy. The minute he sets eyes on him, any irritation he’d had before leaves him. Because it’s _that_ kid, and _fuck,_ his lips are even redder now that he’s been biting them nervously. Daryl feels lust spike through him at the site of the abused skin glittering wetly, and he gives the boy the sultriest look he can muster.

“On second thought,” Daryl says slowly, letting the rich tones of his voice roll. “I think we’ll get along jus’ fine, Miss K.” He winks at the boy, relishing in how his pale skin flushes a deep red.

“Good to hear,” his teacher responds, not looking up.

Daryl smirks and gives the poor kid a break, looking away and to the project he’s currently working on. It’s a painting of a woman. Well, at least, it’s supposed to be. It isn’t exactly obvious that the curving black lines arcing across the canvas are supposed to form her hair, or that the red splotch hidden among them is supposed to be her lips. Stealing a glance at the boy, he sees the glitter of blue eyes under his long lashes, and he absentmindedly dabs his paintbrush in the blue paint, adding two dots that were no more discernible as eyes than the lips and hair. Still, it’s the right color, and Daryl thinks that it’d be impossible to capture those eyes, anyway.

* * *

 

The day comes where they have to do realism in art class. As much as Daryl bitches and moans and complains, Miss K is persistent. She tells him that his art is beautiful, but he needs to learn other ways to do things, that abstract isn’t the only way to go. When she doesn’t let up after fifteen straight minutes of Daryl complaining after class, he gives up. She’s a stubborn woman, and Daryl knows how that goes.

The next day, she reveals with an impish smile aimed directly at Daryl, that they’ll be drawing with a partner, alternating each day who works on who. Daryl only raises her eyebrows at her, and her eyes flicker to Rick. He fights the urge to burst out laughing, because absolutely _nothing_ gets past Miss K, and she’s probably noticed how he’s different with Rick. Or maybe it’s just that she knows his history, and she knows how impulsive his libido is. But he thinks that, to most people, fucking someone’s a little more intimate than painting them—though, he’s never viewed sex as intimate at all. He shrugs it off. Daryl doesn’t really care about other people’s machinations.

“U-uh, Daryl?” Rick asks him a few minutes after everyone’s paired up. “D’ya wanna work together?”

Daryl looks at him impassively. “Ya’d better be a damn good artist. If ya don’t draw me pretty, I’m gonna kick yer ass.”

Rick lets out a little laugh at that, a little bit of the tension leaving him, and Daryl finds that he really likes the sound. He shows Daryl a few things in his sketchbook, things he’s done out of class. And it’s not an understatement to say Daryl’s absolutely amazed.

“Who’s that?” Daryl asks, stopping him when he tries to flip past a portrait of a sleeping little girl. If he couldn’t see the texture scratched into the paper, he’d be convinced that it was a photo.

“S’my little sister,” Rick says, rubbing the back of his neck. “She never stays still long enough for me to draw her, so I waited till she fell asleep watchin’ _The Little Mermaid_.”

Daryl cracks a little smile at that. “All right, I trust ya to draw me, then.”

One corner of Rick’s mouth turns up in a shy little smile. “I’m honored.”

From then on, Rick refuses to show Daryl his work in progress. He hides it from him, his reflexes even faster than his own when he tugs the paper away and hugs it to his chest, glaring at him reproachfully. Daryl thinks about threatening the kid, but he just goes along with it. If it were anyone other than Rick Grimes, he doesn’t think that he would.

They work on the same project for several weeks, switching off between modeling and drawing. Daryl has no qualms of showing Rick his drawing, but that’s mostly because he’s anxious to get his feedback, even though he’d never admit it. He likes it when a little smile turns up Rick’s ridiculously red lips, when he blushes and tells him it’s beautiful. He saves the boy’s eyes for last, because it’s the one thing that he doesn’t want to mess up. He’s already gotten his lips down; he thinks it’d be impossible to _not_ get them perfect when he’s had their shape and color memorized since the day they met. But the eyes—they’re something special, and, on the third day of Daryl just sitting there, touching up the shading underneath his jaw or his hair, he swallows his pride and asks Rick how to draw a pair of damn eyes.

Rick isn’t arrogant about it, doesn’t make fun of him like Merle would. No, he just takes out a scrap of paper and sets to drawing the outline of Daryl’s eyes. “Ya can’t do them one at a time,” he explains. “You gotta look at them as a whole, or you’re never gonna get the expression right. And don’t draw the eyelashes till you’re done with all the shadin’ ’round the eyelid, or you’ll make it too dark. And don’t be afraid ta put highlights practically everywhere, ’specially with blue eyes. Eyes are s’posed ta look kinda like water, y’know? Don’t let ’em be too flat.” He snaps his mouth shut, flushing at how much he’s been talking. But Daryl just smiles a little, because he likes when Rick talks, how his words speed up when he’s excited about something.

Rick holds out his sketch of Daryl’s eyes, and they, too, look good enough to be clipped out from a photo in the five minutes he’s had to draw them. “See?”

Daryl lets the words sink into him, and then he nods. He thinks he understands what Rick’s saying. Something about the highlights—the eyes he draws _do_ look flat and dead, and he can’t imagine drawing Rick’s eyes like that. “Mhmm,” he mumbles, pencil hovering over the empty space in his portrait of Rick.

“Go on,” the boy says encouragingly, but Daryl’s hand is frozen. He looks up to meet Rick’s eyes, and there’s a moment where neither of them breathe.

“Do you want me ta help?” Rick whispers, even though Miss K’s perfectly fine with them talking in class. Daryl gets the feeling he isn’t just talking about the portrait anymore.

Daryl just swallows thickly and nods, angling himself so that Rick can access the portrait. He feels Rick’s fingers ghost over his gently, and he jumps a little, even though he’d been expecting the contact. It’s just instinctive, after everything. Daryl’d learned the hard way what touch meant, and he had the scars to prove it. But, as Rick’s hand covers his and leads his pencil to begin sketching the first eye, he’s thinking that maybe it’s not all bad. Eventually, Daryl starts to take control again, and Rick eases his touch away, meeting his gaze fondly whenever Daryl looks up to reference his eyes.

By the end of the class, both of Rick’s eyes are there in the portrait, and, if he does say so himself, they look fucking _fantastic._

“Good work, Daryl,” Miss K says the next day when she comes around to make sure everyone’s cleaned up properly. She doesn’t tolerate a mess in her room, and, though she doesn’t know it, Daryl’ll kick the ass of anyone who wanted to put one there. “I think that’s the best thing I’ve ever seen you draw.” She turns her eyes to Rick. “You ever going to show us your portrait of Daryl?”

Daryl looks at him curiously, because he really wants to know the answer, too. Rick blushes and sheepishly takes the paper out from behind his back, his go-to place to keep the damned thing away from Daryl. He places it on the table, and Daryl looks at it in shock. It’s completely done, looks like it has been for days. The eyes are etched in with precise detail, and Daryl’s starting to realize that the sketch he’d done to teach Daryl really was just a sketch compared to what Rick could really do. He’s even gotten the birthmark above his lips to exact detail, and Daryl feels like he can reach out and touch where it’s raised on the drawn skin. But, as his eyes travel down the face of the portrait, he realizes that there just aren’t any lips. No eraser marks, no ghosts of previous attempts, no nothing. Everything is finished, from the wisps of hair dusting his forehead to the very pores of his skin. But, there just aren’t any lips.

Daryl looks up from the drawing, his question burning in his eyes, teetering at the end of his tongue, but he says nothing. Rick just stares back at him evenly for a moment or two, before he says, so quietly that even Daryl has to strain his ears to hear it, “I just. . . I wanted ta draw ya smilin’.”

There’s a tiny corner of Daryl’s mind that’s thankful that Miss K’s left the room when he grabs Rick by the hips and pushes him up against the table they’re working at, kissing him forcefully. He feels Rick, rigid before with shock, melt into his touch before he starts kissing back, a vehemence in his movements that shocks Daryl. It’s sloppy and it’s wet and he knows this is Rick’s first real kiss, but it’s better than anything he’d ever had with anyone else. Their tongues twine together in the space of their joined, open mouths, and Daryl thinks that Rick tastes like the candy his lips so strongly resemble.

For once, he lets someone share in the power, doesn’t completely dominate this. He even lets Rick cup his face—he never lets _anyone_ touch him—when they draw back for air. Rick’s eyes are squeezed tightly shut, his cheeks flushed like a damn porcelain doll’s, his mouth open and panting and _every bit as red_ as Daryl’d imagined. Then, Rick leans forward and presses a kiss to each corner of his mouth, and they tug up into a smile in response, because it’s tender, and it feels like loving, and Daryl’s never had that before.

“Stay just like that,” Rick whispers, breath hot against Daryl’s open lips, eyes opening halfway to look at Daryl. “Don’t move.”

And, even though it’s Daryl’s first reaction to defy him and let his expression fall, he doesn’t. Because it isn’t hard to keep smiling. It doesn’t feel like there’re leaden weights of bitterness and anger and frustration at _everything_ pulling at his mouth. He stays like that until Rick finishes etching in his lips, even makes them look somewhat swollen and moist from kissing.

Daryl tears his eyes away from the portrait, lets them return to Rick’s face, his fucking _gorgeous_ face. And it’s then that he lets his smile fall, stares at Rick with a sudden somberness. Because he wants to take this boy in his arms and bring him back to his house and pick him up and throw him down on his bed. He wants to straddle his hips and kiss him until he can’t breathe, lips trailing down the soft, sensitive skin of his throat. He wants to slowly snap every button of his shirt open with his teeth and kiss the revealed skin there, let the boy’s hands fist in his hair because Daryl thinks he’s the only one he’d let do that.

But he can’t. Because he has an asshole fucking father who would literally beat him until he was dead if he saw them together. It’s not like the others he’s been with, where it’s lasted maybe twenty or thirty minutes before he’s pulling his clothes back on and telling them to get the fuck out before they regretted it. He wants to curl up with Rick for hours, take his time to reduce the boy to a pliant, shuddering mess underneath his mouth and hands before he finally slips out of his clothes and fucks him—no, makes _love_ to him.

“What’s wrong?” Rick finally asks, hovering near but not touching him. The fact that he’s already picked up on when to touch and not touch Daryl just reminds him that this one is different, special.

“S’nothing,” Daryl says, but he turns his arm in a wide arc around the room. “Ya jus’ deserve better than this, Rick, and I can’t give it to ya.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rick murmurs, and Daryl opens his arms so as to let him know that he can fall into his embrace. And he does, his face pressed against Daryl’s collarbone. “’cause I’m thinkin’ the best is wherever you are, Daryl.”


End file.
